


Rift

by iconoclastic04



Category: Danny Phantom, Gravity Falls
Genre: A small amount of tasing, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Cultists, Fentonworks, Gen, General Gravity Falls Weirdness, Ghost King Danny Fenton, Magic is Real, Portals, Summoning Circles, The Ghost Zone, handwavey science, more characters/tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29773554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iconoclastic04/pseuds/iconoclastic04
Summary: When Danny wakes up in his pajamas in the middle of a summoning circle, surrounded by people chanting, he’s annoyed at best. Then a six-fingered man and a couple of teenagers take down the entire cult in less than five minutes, and he realizes he might have found the only place weirder than Amity Park.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 251





	Rift

**Author's Note:**

> Did I just want to write a fic that combines all my favorite tropes? Yes. Enjoy.
> 
> Also, Dipper is a little shit in this, because I love the kid but geez would he be annoying in real life. Mabel, meanwhile, gets to unleash her penchant for violence.

The building is old and weathered, its windows boarded up. Whatever color the siding had once been is long lost to layers of graffiti. Even in the chill of the night, the building seems to suck in all the heat in the area. The wind whispers plaintively through the pines, mingling with the sounds of chanting coming from within the building.

Most teenagers wouldn’t be happy to be crouched on the ground outside an abandoned community center at eleven p.m. Dipper and Mabel Pines aren’t most teenagers. 

“You ready, kids?” Ford asks.

Dipper shifts, his knee digging into the dirt. He gropes in his pocket for his taser—still there, good—and nodded. He can feel Mabel nodding next to him.

“Good,” Ford says. “Formation delta-alpha-echo, flanking me. I want you two to keep to the sides as much as possible—you’re the secret weapon, after all.” He rises fluidly from his crouch on the ground and pulls a brass gun with an edison bulb attachment out of his pocket. “On my count. Three. Two. One.”

He kicks open the door. With a puff of dust, it flies clean off its hinges and lands several feet away, giving the three a clear view of the main room. It’s filled with probably twenty people, all clad in dark green hooded robes. And, directly in the center of the room, an imposing figure in a pure black robe, an intricately drawn circular glyph, and...a teenager, wearing plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt with a cartoon ghost on it that said “I’m here for the boos.”

Almost in unison, the figures stop chanting and turned to face the intruder. They all look vaguely annoyed, except for the kid standing barefoot in the summoning circle, who was staring at them with his mouth open.

Ford cocks the gun, pointing it at the man in black robes. “You have one chance to surrender peacefully,” he says. All eyes were on him and the pistol in his hand, which meant that he could safely assume that Dipper and Mabel were fanning out to pen the cultists in.

The man scoffs. “Pines, huh? It’ll take more than some vigilante mad scientist to stop us. We have imprisoned the Ghost King and bound him to our will! With just a wave of my hand, he will surely smite you from this earth, dooming you to spend eternity roaming the halls of hell!” He raises a hand and stares at Ford imperiously. 

Ford stares back. The guy wasn’t blinking. To his right, the creak of a floorboard and a low thump. He tightens his grip on the gun, allowing his eyes to flicker briefly to the kid in the circle. He certainly didn’t look like a king of any sort, nor did he particularly look like a ghost. He looked, in all honesty, like a college student that someone had pulled out of bed.

Black Robes turns around and gestures emphatically towards Ford. “Well, ghost? Strike him down!”

The kid rolls his eyes. “Like I said, dude, I think you have me confused with someone else. I’m not exactly known for my, uh, smiting. Actually, I don’t think that’s even something I can do.” He props his hands on his hips and glares. “Also like I said, I was fucking sleeping and you pulled me out of bed. Do you have any idea how little sleep I get already?”

“Silence!” Black Robes howls. “You are bound to my will!” He lunged forward towards the boy, and Ford quickly pulls the trigger. The kid flinches back, stepping just inside the outer line of the circle.

Black robes staggers back. “No! You—I— hah?” He looks up, sliding his hood off his head, revealing plump features and an impressive widow’s peak. “Where am I? Who are these people?”

Summoning circle kid looks even more shocked than he did a minute ago, which is saying something. The green-robed figures closest to him begins to back away, casting their eyes about for any exit that wasn’t blocked.

That was about when they realized that while they were focusing on Ford and his weird-looking gun, over half of their forces had been rendered unconscious. Ford let himself crack a slow grin at the fear on their faces. Mabel really was scarily efficient when she wanted to be. He shifts his aim, steadies, fires. Again. And again. Within a few minutes, all of the cultists are tied up and either completely bewildered as to what they were doing in an abandoned building or simply unconscious.

Dipper and Mabel come to stand next to him as he pivots to face the summoning circle kid, still aiming the gun. For a minute, nobody says anything. The kids’ eyes are transfixed on the memory gun and the twelve fingers wrapped around it.

“Hi, I’m Mabel! This is my twin brother Dipper and our great-uncle Ford!” says Mabel. His eyes, so brilliantly blue that they look like they could be glowing, snap to her immediately. “What’s your name? What are you doing out here? You don’t look like a cultist.”

“Mabel!” Dipper hisses, elbowing her in the side. “Haha, ow,” she says.

“Uh, hi,” the kid says. “I’m Danny, I don’t really know how I got here, and I’m not a cultist. I think they...maybe...summoned me?” He raises the inflection at the end of the sentence. “Who are you? And what does that gun do?”

“Currently, it’s set to erase all memories you have of cults or cult-related activities,” Ford replies. “Why did they summon you?”

Danny shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you. I mean, clearly they weren’t expecting…” he gestures to himself. “....this.” He seems to think for a minute, then perks up. “Oh! They did say that they were trying to summon the Ghost King. Which is, like, crazy, I mean, everybody knows the ghost king is just a myth, haha….” he trails off, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Anyway, um, do you know where we are?”

Ford observes him some more. He certainly seems genuine, and it’s unlikely that the true Ghost King would be masquerading as a teenage boy in his pajamas. Summoning accidents do happen occasionally after all. Not often, but occasionally.

After another minute of silence, he answers. “Gravity Falls, Oregon.”

Danny’s eyes widen almost comically. “Oregon?” he shouts. “What! I live in Illinois!” He turns to Dipper and Mabel. “Is he serious? Oregon?”

Dipper nods once, while Mabel bobs her head enthusiastically.

“Oh my god,” Danny mutters, burying his head in his hands. “Jazz is gonna kill me.”

“Jazz?” Mabel asks. Ford lets her lead the line of questioning for now—most people are more prone to answering honestly when their interrogator is a fifteen-year-old girl with glitter in her hair. It’s a strategy they’ve used often, and to great success.

“My sister,” Danny moans. “We’re running our parents’ business while they’re out of town. Is there an airport nearby?” He pats his pockets. “Shit, I think my phone is dead. And I don’t even have my wallet.” He glances up at Ford, eyes wide, and runs his hand through his hair again.

For the first time in a long time, Ford finds himself making a decision he is not entirely sure of. “Step out of the circle,” he says, “and then maybe we can see about getting you to a phone.”

“Step out of the…? Oh. Right.” Danny mumbles, before taking a quick few steps towards them, passing over the chalk sigil easily. He waves his hands at them. “See? Not a ghost. Just an...accidental summon-ee.”

“Good,” Ford says. “We’ll finish cleanup here, and then we can head back to the Shack.”

One of the cultists stirs. Mabel sticks her taser against his neck and fires. He convulses violently and then falls limp again. Danny suddenly looks like he wants nothing more than to step back into the summoning circle.

“Dipper, watch him. Mabel, help me wipe the rest of their memories,” Ford says, striding towards a clump of cultists and pressing the glass barrel against someone’s forehead. 

Dipper scuttles closer to Danny, glaring at him suspiciously. “Don’t think I believe you’re human just because you walked out of that thing,” he hisses.

Danny chuckles. “Would you believe that isn’t the first time I’ve heard that?”

They fall silent against the crackling of the taser and the laser _pew-pew-pew_ of the memory gun. Dipper doesn’t stop staring at him until Mabel comes up next to him, and then he pulls a large, leather-bound journal out of somewhere and begins scribbling furiously. He’s copying down the summoning circle, Danny realizes, which is even more impressive when he glances back at it and realizes that he has no idea what most of the symbols it consists of even mean, let alone how to write them. Ford stands silently behind Dipper until he’s done. Dipper slides the journal back into his vest and gives a shaky thumbs up.

“So, why did the Cult of the Dead summon you?” Ford asks, narrowing his eyes at Danny. “The circle wasn’t able to hold you, so either you’re incredibly powerful, or you just got caught up in the wrong business.”

Danny gulps. “Well, uh, more of the latter. I basically grew up surrounded by ectoplasm and ectoenergy. I’d probably set off any decent EMF meter, to be honest. Suuuuper ectocontaminated.” 

“Isn’t ectoplasm radioactive?” Dipper asks.

“Technically, yes,” Danny says. “But it’s more harmful at high dosages than short, continued ones. I don’t give off enough energy to actually hurt anyone. I just get...side effects.” 

“Like being summoned halfway across the country in the middle of the night?”

It’s a bit of a stretch, but Danny nods nonetheless. “Yeah, a bunch of weird stuff like that. Cats and dogs hate me. Sometimes electronics malfunction around me, too.”

Ford gives him another look-over. Messy black hair, pajamas, barefoot. Wide, honest eyes that betrayed nothing other than nerves. Despite the suspicious circumstances he found the kid in, he couldn’t help but feel bad for him. And he certainly couldn’t leave him penniless and barefoot in the middle of the night in Gravity Falls, of all places. He’d get eaten within the hour.

He sighs, mind reluctantly made up. The shield around the Shack would keep him out if he had any malicious intentions, after all. “How old are you, kid?” he asks.

“Uh, I’m twenty,” he replies.

Ford peers down at him. “Really?” he asks.

Danny scowls and crosses his arms. “Yes, really,” he snaps. “I’m a sophomore in college.”

“All right, all right,” Ford says, raising his hands placatingly. “Let’s go. Kids, formation theta-alpha.” 

Dipper and Mabel walk next to each other, falling in front of Danny. Ford himself brings up the rear. As they exit the abandoned community center, he slides the memory gun back into his coat. 

“Um, so, where are we going, exactly?” Danny asks, glancing awkwardly around. The town looked almost abandoned. No cars on the road, nobody else out walking, blinds drawn shut in every window he looked at. 

“We’ll head back to the Shack,” Ford says. “You can use the phone there to call somebody.”

“The...Shack?” Danny asks.

“And you can stay for the night!” Mabel chimes in, hopping up and down. She flashes him a grin that almost blinds him when a streetlight reflects off of her braces.

Danny gives an awkward smile back. “Uh, I don’t want to impose or anything—I can just get a hotel—”

“You don’t want to stay in the hotel here, trust me,” Mabel says, still beaming. “Last month some guy woke up completely covered in live fish.”

“Plus, didn’t you say you didn’t have your wallet?” Dipper adds.

Danny bites back a curse. “...Yeah. I guess I don’t.” he replies glumly. 

They’re rapidly approaching a beat-up station wagon. Ford clicks the key fob and its lights flash on. He gestures towards the passengers’ side door, and Danny reluctantly opens it and slides in. He’s not sure getting in the car with this random old guy is the best idea he’s ever had, but he’s got his grandkids or whatever with him, so he can’t be completely evil. Even if the girl was surprisingly vicious with a taser. It reminded him of Sam, actually. Anyway. Worst case scenario he can just go intangible and peace out.

Ford turns the engine over and shifts into gear. “Well, kids, congrats on another successful cult bust!” he says before peeling out of his parking spot. Dipper and Mabel cheer as he lurches around a corner. Danny looks like he’s regretting every life choice that led him to this moment.

——— 

_Geez, Fenton, you’ve really done it now_ , Danny thinks to himself as he sits in the passenger seat of the oldest station wagon known to man, hurtling through what appears to be an abandoned town. The eerily empty streets almost reminded him of Amity Park. Danny tries his best to keep the peace in his hometown, he really does, but he can’t be everywhere at once. It’s uncommon for him to sleep through some rampage or another simply because it happened on the other side of town. After a few months of consistent ghost attacks, people quickly realized that going out at night was not worth the risk. it quickly became not worth it to go outside at night.

“Hey, uh, where is everybody?” he asks. 

“Oh, they don’t come out because of the monsters,” Mabel says.

Danny’s heart plummets into his stomach. “The—what?” Was that what had made this summons so impossible to resist? Some sort of natural portal to the Ghost Zone nearby? Was the entire area actually overrun with ghosts? 

“Yeah, you know, flying eyeballs, gnomes, zombies, unicorns, bigfoot…” Dipper says with an air of smugness that makes Danny want to kick him in the shin.

“Gravity Falls is a weirdness hotspot,” the old man, Ford or something, chimes in. “For many centuries, creatures of all kinds have flocked here. It’s got the highest concentration of supernatural entities and anomalies in the world.”

“Supernatural entities? Like ghosts?” Danny asks. He’s heard of other so-called mythical creatures, although his actual experience is pretty limited. He’s pretty sure the ghosts of the Far Frozen are the originators of most Yeti stories, but he knows for a fact that the Jersey Devil is real. (That was a camping trip he would be glad to forget.)

“Ghosts?” Dipper was saying. “We’ve met ghosts. There was this old couple who haunted the Dusk 2 Dawn and hated teenagers. And the whole lumberjack ghost at Pacifica’s party that turned me into wood.”

“Wood?” Danny asks. He’s proud that his voice only sounds slightly panicked. That couldn’t be Undergrowth, could it? He thought he had hashed out very clearly what the plant-loving ghost could and could not do, and turning people into organic material of any kind was strictly forbidden.

Dipper nods sagely. “Yeah, Pacifica ended up agreeing to let the unwashed masses in, and that made him so happy that he lifted the curse on her family and left peacefully.”

Danny blinks. “...huh.” It was rare, almost unheard of, for a ghost to actually fulfill their obsession and dissipate. Definitely not Undergrowth, then. “So...none of your ‘creatures’ are green? Glowing? Can walk through walls, turn invisible, all that stuff?”

He’s pretty sure all three of the other occupants of the car are giving him Looks now. Which, for people who have already met ghosts, and apparently believe in flying eyeballs, is so not fair.

“No,” Ford says, “although many exhibit some form of luminescence and the occasional green tint, intangibility is not typical.”

Danny hums noncommittally. “You sure seem to know a lot about this stuff.”

Ford turns onto a small gravel road lined on either side by thick, dark trees. The car jolts as he winds through the trees at a frankly alarming pace. “I’m a paranormal researcher and scientist,” he says. “It’s my job to know this stuff.” He thumbs towards the back of the car. “Dipper and Mabel are my apprentices.”

“Oh, cool,” Danny says. “My parents are paranormal scientists, so they—”

He cuts himself off as they round a corner, exposing a small wooden shack with a huge sign labeled “MYSTERY HACK” and way too many missing shingles. There’s an armchair on the porch, signs proclaiming “NO REFUNDS” tacked to every exposed surface, and the whole thing looks like a strong breeze would blow it over. 

That’s not what catches Danny’s attention, though. 

No, what catches his attention is the huge dome-shaped shield over the house. It’s glowing a faint blue, engraved with symbols that swirl and move gently, bumping against each other before drifting apart again. He recognizes glyphs from his trips to some of the ancient realms of the Ghost Zone—places that had remained virtually unchanged for eons. Others he recognizes from the crash course on modern witchcraft and demonology he’d been forced to take after accepting his crown. There’s even a few copper traces from circuit boards, and he spots one or two bastardized ghost speak characters. It’s clearly a protective barrier of some sort, but not made with ectotechnology. Completely magical. “Holy shit,” he breathes.

“Hey, it doesn’t look that bad!” Mabel shouts from the backseat.

“How long did it take to make that?” he asks, not tearing his eyes away from the mesmerizing glow.

“The Shack? Maybe six months,” Ford says.

“No, I—the shield! It’s so robust. I’ve never seen one that accounts for so many different kinds of magic.”

The car goes silent. Danny, when no answer is forthcoming, glances around. Ford, Dipper, and Mabel are all staring at him. “What?”

“You can see the shield?” Ford asks slowly.

Oh, man. This is some hidden-from-humans bullshit that he totally just blurted out, didn’t he. Danny, you’re a genius. So smart. Quick, think of something to say. Anything. Just don’t say what shield— 

“Am I not supposed to?” is what comes out of his mouth, and he almost facepalms.

Ford keeps staring at him. “...Most people can’t,” he finally says. “I can only see it because I have a metal plate installed in my head as an anti-possession measure.”

Now it’s Danny’s turn to stare. “Does that really work?” he blurts out before he can stop himself.

“Yes,” Ford replies curtly. 

“Is this ‘cause of your ecto-whatever?” Mabel pipes up from the backseat.

Thank you, Mabel, for that gift-wrapped excuse, you are Danny’s new favorite obnoxious teenager. “Uh, probably,” he says. “I’ve always been able to see the ghost shields at home, but I think everyone can see those, so it’s not a special thing.”

“If you can get through the shield, you can stay the night,” Ford says gruffly, opening the car door. “Otherwise you’re sleeping in the woods.”

Danny gulps. He really hopes there aren’t anti-ghost measures built into that shield. 

He gets out of the car and trails after the Pines. One by one, they step through the shield, until the only one left is Danny. He gets the sense this is some kind of test, but he still doesn’t know what, exactly, the Pines expect him to be. Closing his eyes, he keeps walking forward, until he feels the cool touch of the shield on his skin. He was expecting it to be hot, like the ghost shields around almost every building in Amity Park, but instead it’s almost refreshing.

As soon as he’s completely through the shield, though, he gasps, eyes shooting open. He can only hope that the Pines weren’t paying too much attention, because he’s certain that his eyes flashed green for just a moment. It’s all he can do to keep himself from going ghost right then and there.

A huge, roiling source of ectoplasmic energy is emanating from somewhere underneath this house. It doesn’t feel more powerful than his parents’ portal, but it’s rawer, more undefined. Even being near it makes his hair stand on end. That...could be a problem.

“Danny? You okay?” Mabel asks, and Danny forces himself to stare down at her. 

“Yeah!” he says, trying to keep the edge of hysteria out of his voice. “Just, uh, felt weird.”

Ford is giving him another one of his patented suspicious looks. Danny can feel sweat beading at the back of his neck. “Do you still have a phone I can use?” he asks. The sooner he can go check out what that ectoenergy is coming from, the better.

The four troop into the house. “Dipper, show Danny the phone, will you?” Ford asks. “I’ll go see about setting up the guest room. Mabel, make sure Stan isn’t asleep in the living room.” The end of his sentence is punctuated with a huge, wall-shaking snore.

“That’s Grunkle Stan,” Dipper says as he walks into a small kitchenette. Danny follows awkwardly. “Here’s the phone.”

The phone is a bright orange rotary phone sitting on a very cluttered side table. Danny picks the receiver up and dials the number he’s had memorized since he was a baby. It rings once, twice, three times…

“Hello?” the sleepy voice of his sister asks. 

“Jazz! Thank goodness,” he exclaims. 

“Danny?” she says, suddenly sounding much more awake. “Why are you calling me at three in the morning? Are you okay?”

Whoops, it was pretty late, wasn’t it. “I, uh….” he glances over at Dipper, who has parked himself in the open doorway and is very obviously pretending not to listen. “You know how I have such _high levels_ of _ectocontamination_? I somehow got caught up in a cult summoning...and now I’m in Oregon.”

“Oregon?” Jazz screeches. Danny winces, holding the phone away from his face. “What the hell, Danny?”

“Yeah, um, so I got picked up by these, er, cult-busters who are letting me borrow their phone and crash here for the night. I’ll have to see about getting home tomorrow, I don’t have my wallet on me.”

She scoffs, but there’s a hint of fondness in her voice. “Only you, Danny.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I know. I’ll be back as soon as I can get something figured out; do you think you can handle business until then?”

“All two of our customers?” she asks. “Yeah, I can handle it. Ever since we built that website and people realized they could buy our stuff without having to talk to Dad, hardly anybody comes into Fentonworks.”

“The other stuff too,” Danny says. “Will you text Sam and Tucker for me? There might be some, uh, _signal interference_. I’m actually not sure I have service out here.” He glances over at Dipper for confirmation, who shakes his head before abruptly realizing he’d been caught listening in and blushing bright red. Whatever, he just hopes Jazz picks up on his hint that there might be something going on here.

“Do whatever you need to,” Jazz says. “Just be safe, okay?”

“You know me, I’m always safe,” Danny says. He can hear her roll her eyes. “Night, dork.”

“Night, Danny.” _Click._

Danny places the phone back in its cradle. “Er, thanks again,” he says to Dipper. 

“Yeah, no problem,” Dipper says. “Also, we’re not really cult-busters.”

Danny supposes he did tell Jazz that. “What are you, then?” he asks.

“Like Grunkle Ford said, we’re paranormal researchers. I’ve been working on cataloguing all the creatures and anomalies of Gravity Falls for three summers now.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Danny says. “I mostly just hunt ghosts. You’ll have to show me some of these anomalies before I go, yeah?”

Dipper looks like he can’t quite believe his ears. A strangled squeak pops out. “You want to hear about my notes?” he asks right as Ford enters. “Yes! Are you tired? We could do it right now! What do you want to know about first?”

“Danny, we have a room set up for you,” Ford interrupts.

“Great, thanks!” Danny says, smiling cautiously. “Dipper, um, maybe you could show me tomorrow? I’m pretty beat. Turns out getting summoned really takes it out of you.”

“Okay, yeah, sure,” Dipper says. Ford steps back out of the kitchen, heading down a dimly lit hallway, and Danny follows. Behind him, he can hear another squawk from Dipper. “Wait, did you say hunting _ghosts_?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Come say hi on [tumblr](http://robotbeowulf.tumblr.com) or leave a comment!


End file.
